For more than a century, American farmers have fed the world. In the decades ahead, they can do something just as transformative: power the world’s transition to renewable energy and materials.
Agriculture sits at the center of one of the greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century. By creating the world’s largest renewable biomass market, the United States can transform crops grown in places like Northeast Wisconsin into the building blocks of the modern economy—powering AI datacenters, fueling airplanes, replacing petroleum-based plastics, supplying advanced manufacturing, and producing the next generation of pharmaceuticals.
This isn’t just an environmental idea. It’s an economic development strategy for rural America—one that aligns perfectly with a prosperity economy built on innovation, sustainability, and long-term growth.
Farmers already produce the raw materials needed to supply a wide range of industries:
Instead of simply selling crops into commodity markets, farmers could participate in multiple high-value supply chains simultaneously. One acre could produce food, fuel, and industrial materials.
Farmers face an economic challenge that policymakers rarely address: volatile commodity prices.
When global crop prices fall, rural economies suffer. But if agriculture becomes the feedstock for multiple industries, farmers gain access to new revenue streams that stabilize farm income.
A renewable biomass market would unlock an entire ecosystem of new products and industries.
The goal is not for government to run agriculture. The goal is to help create markets—just as federal policy helped build the agricultural economy we have today.
The United States still spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year importing fossil fuels. By expanding renewable biomass markets, American agriculture can help power the nation’s energy future.
Farmers could become:
This strengthens national security while creating opportunity across rural America.
My vision for a prosperity economy is simple:
Economic growth should improve the lives of everyday Americans while protecting the resources future generations depend on. Renewable biomass markets do exactly that.
They:
And most importantly, they give rural communities a central role in America’s economic future.
Farmers Powered the 20th Century.
They Can Power the 21st.
This isn’t left or right—it’s rural America leading the next industrial revolution.